Chapter

IN WHICH IT IS ALL DONE OVER AGAIN

All morning she had gazed on the shining reaches of the Hudson, their colour deepening to blue as she neared the sea. A gold-bound volume of Shelley, with his name on the fly-leaf, lay in her lap. And two lines she repeated softly to herself—two lines that held a vision:

"He was as the sun in his fierce youth,

As terrible and lovely as a tempest;"

She summoned him out of the chaos of the past, and the past became the present, and he stood before her as though in the flesh. Nay, she heard his voice, his laugh, she even recognized again the smouldering flames in his eyes as he glanced into hers, and his characteristic manners and gestures. Honora wondered. In vain, during those long months of exile had she tried to reconstruct him thus the vision in its entirety would not come: rare, fleeting, partial, and tantalizing glimpses she had been vouchsafed, it is true. The whole of him had been withheld until this breathless hour before the dawn of her happiness.

Yet, though his own impatient spirit had fared forth to meet her with this premature gift of his attributes, she had to fight the growing fear within her. Now that the days of suffering were as they had not been, insistent questions dinned in her ears: was she entitled to the joys to come? What had she done to earn them? Had hers not been an Attempt, on a gigantic scale, to cheat the fates? Nor could she say whether this feeling were a wholly natural failure to grasp a future too big, or the old sense of the unreality of events that had followed her so persistently.

The Hudson disappeared. Factories, bridges, beflagged week-end resorts, ramshackle houses, and blocks of new buildings were scattered here and there. The train was running on a causeway between miles of tenements where women and children, overtaken by lassitude, hung out of the windows: then the blackness of the tunnel, and Honora closed her eyes. Four minutes, three minutes, two minutes.... The motion ceased. At the steps of the car a uniformed station porter seized her bag; and she started to walk down the long, narrow platform. Suddenly she halted.

"Drop anything, Miss?"inquired the porter.

"No,"answered Honora, faintly. He looked at her in concern, and she began to walk on again, more slowly.

It had suddenly come over her that the man she was going to meet she scarcely knew! Shyness seized her, a shyness that bordered on panic. And what was he really like, that she should put her whole trust in him? She glanced behind her: that way was closed: she had a mad desire to get away, to hide, to think. It must have been an obsession that had possessed her all these months. The porter was looking again, and he voiced her predicament.

"The re's only one way out, Miss."

And then, amongst the figures massed behind the exit in the grill, she saw him, his face red-bronze with the sea tan, his crisp, curly head bared, his eyes alight with a terrifying welcome; and a tremor of a fear akin to ecstasy ran through her: the fear of the women of days gone by whose courage carried them to the postern or the strand, and fainted there. She could have taken no step farther—and there was no need. New strength flowed from the hand she held that was to carry her on and on.

He spoke her name. He led her passive, obedient, through the press to the side street, and then he paused and looked into her burning face.

"I have you at last,"he said."Are you happy?"

"I don't know,"she faltered."Oh, Hugh, it all seems so strange! I don't know what I have done."

"I know,"he said exultantly;"but to save my soul I can't believe it."

She watched him, bewildered, while he put her maid into a cab, and by an effort roused herself.

"Where are you going, Hugh?"

"To get married,"he replied promptly.

She pulled down her veil.

"Please be sensible,"she implored."I've arranged to go to a hotel."

"What hotel?"

"The—the Barnstable,"she said. The place had come to her memory on the train."It's very nice and—and quiet—so I've been told. And I've telegraphed for my rooms."

"I'll humour you this once,"he answered, and gave the order.

She got into the carriage. It had blue cushions with the familiar smell of carriage upholstery, and the people in the street still hurried about their business as though nothing in particular were happening. The horses started, and some forgotten key in her brain was touched as Chiltern raised her veil again.

"You'll tear it, Hugh,"she said, and perforce lifted it herself. Her eyes met his—and she awoke. Not to memories or regrets, but to the future, for the recording angel had mercifully destroyed his book.

"Did you miss me?"she said.

"Miss you! My God, Honora, how can you ask? When I look back upon these last months, I don't see how I ever passed through them. And you are changed,"he said."I could not have believed it possible, but you are. You are—you are finer."

He had chosen his word exquisitely. And then, as they trotted sedately through Madison Avenue, he strained her in his arms and kissed her.

"Oh, Hugh!"she cried, scarlet, as she disengaged, herself,"you mustn't —here!"

"You're free!"he exclaimed."You're mine at last! I can't believe it!

Look at me, and tell me so."

She tried.

"Yes,"she faltered.

"Yes—what?"

"Yes. I—I am yours."

She looked out of the window to avoid those eyes. Was this New York, or Jerusalem? We re these the streets through which she had driven and trod in her former life? Her whole soul cried out denial. No episode, no accusing reminiscences stood out—not one: the very corners were changed. Would it all change back again if he were to lessen the insistent pressure on the hand in her lap.

"Honora?"

"Yes?"she answered, with a start.

"You missed me? Look at me and tell me the truth."

"The truth!"she faltered, and shuddered. The contrast was too great —the horror of it too great for her to speak of. The pen of Dante had not been adequate."Don't ask me, Hugh,"she begged,"I can't talk about it—I never shall be able to talk about it. If I had not loved you, I should have died."

How deeply he felt and understood and sympathized she knew by the quivering pressure on her hand. Ah, if he had not! If he had failed to grasp the meaning of her purgatory.

"You are wonderful, Honora,"was what he said in a voice broken by emotion.

She thanked him with one fleeting, tearful glance that was as a grant of all her priceless possessions. The carriage stopped, but it was some moments before they realized it.

"You may come up in a little while,"she whispered,"and lunch with me —if you like."

"If I like!"he repeated.

But she was on the sidewalk, following the bell boy into the cool, marble-lined area of the hotel. A smiling clerk handed her a pen, and set the new universe to rocking.

"Mrs. Leffingwell, I presume? We have your telegram."

Mrs. Leffingwell! Who was that person? For an instant she stood blankly holding the pen, and then she wrote rapidly, if a trifle unsteadily:"Mrs. Leffingwell and maid."A pause. Where was her home? Then she added the words,"St. Louis."

Her rooms were above the narrow canon of the side street, looking over the roofs of the inevitable brownstone fronts opposite. While Mathilde, in the adjoining chamber, unpacked her bag, Honora stood gazing out of the sitting-room windows, trying to collect her thoughts. Her spirits had unaccountably fallen, the sense of homelessness that had pursued her all these months overtaken her once more. Never, never, she told herself, would she enter a hotel again alone; and when at last he came she clung to him with a passion that thrilled him the more because he could not understand it.

"Hugh—you will care for me?"she cried.

He kissed away her tears. He could not follow her; he only knew that what he held to him was a woman such as he had never known before. Tender, and again strangely and fiercely tender: an instrument of such miraculous delicacy as to respond, quivering, to the lightest touch; an harmonious and perfect blending of strength and weakness, of joy and sorrow,—of all the warring elements in the world. What he felt was the supreme masculine joy of possession.

At last they sat down on either side of the white cloth the waiter had laid, for even the gods must eat. Not that our deified mortals ate much on this occasion. Vesta presided once more, and after the feast was over gently led them down the slopes until certain practical affairs began to take shape in the mind of the man. Presently he looked at his watch, and then at the woman, and made a suggestion.

"Marry you now—this of afternoon!"she cried, aghast."Hugh, are you in your right senses?"

"Yes,"he said,"I'm reasonable for the first time in my life."

She laughed, and immediately became serious. But when she sought to marshal her arguments, she found that they had fled.

"Oh, but I couldn't,"she answered."And besides, there are so many things I ought to do. I—I haven't any clothes."

But this was a plea he could not be expected to recognize. He saw no reason why she could not buy as many as she wanted after the ceremony.

"Is that all?"he demanded.

"No—that isn't all. Can't you see that—that we ought to wait, Hugh?"

"No,"he exclaimed,"No I can't see it. I can only see that every moment of waiting would be a misery for us both. I can only see that the situation, as it is to-day, is an intolerable one for you."

She had not expected him to see this.

"The re are others to be thought of,"she said, after a moment's hesitation.

"What others?"

The answer she should have made died on her lips.

"It seems so-indecorous, Hugh."

"Indecorous!"he cried, and pushed back his chair and rose."What's indecorous about it? To leave you here alone in a hotel in New York would not only be indecorous, but senseless. How long would you put it off? a week—a month—a year? Where would you go in the meantime, and what would you do?"

"But your friends, Hugh—and mine?"

"Friends! What have they got to do with it?"

It was the woman, now, who for a moment turned practical—and for the man's sake. She loved, and the fair fabric of the future which they were to weave together, and the plans with which his letters had been filled and of which she had dreamed in exile, had become to-day as the stuff of which moonbeams are made. As she looked up at him, eternity itself did not seem long enough for the fulfilment of that love. But he? Would the time not come when he would demand something more? and suppose that something were denied? She tried to rouse herself, to think, to consider a situation in which her instinct had whispered just once—there must be some hidden danger: but the electric touch of his hand destroyed the process, and made her incapable of reason.

"What should we gain by a week's or a fortnight's delay,"he was saying,"except so much misery?"

She looked around the hotel sitting-room, and tried to imagine the desolation of it, stripped of his presence. Why not? The re was reason in what he said. And yet, if she had known it, it was not to reason she yielded, but to the touch of his hand.

"We will be married to-day,"he decreed."I have planned it all. I have bought the'Adhemar', the yacht which I chartered last winter. She is here. We'll go off on her together, away from the world, for as long as you like. And then,"he ended triumphantly,"then we'll go back to Grenoble and begin our life."

"And begin our life!"she repeated. But it was not to him that she spoke.

"Hugh, I positively have to have some clothes."

"Clothes!"His voice expressed his contempt for the mundane thought.

"Yes, clothes,"she repeated resolutely.

He looked at his watch once more.

"Very well,"he said,"we'll get'em on the way."

"On the way?"she asked.

"We'll have to have a marriage license, I'm afraid,"he explained apologetically.

Honora grew crimson. A marriage license!

She yielded, of course. Who could resist him? Nor need the details of that interminable journey down the crowded artery of Broadway to the Centre of Things be entered into. An ignoble errand, Honora thought; and she sat very still, with flushed cheeks, in the corner of the carriage. Chiltern's finer feelings came to her rescue. He, too, resented this senseless demand of civilization as an indignity to their Olympian loves. And he was a man to chafe at all restraints. But at last the odious thing was over, grim and implacable Law satisfied after he had compelled them to stand in line for an interminable period before his grill, and mingle with those whom he chose, in his ignorance, to call their peers. Honora felt degraded as they emerged with the hateful paper, bought at such a price. The City Hall Park, with its moving streams of people, etched itself in her memory.

"Leave me, Hugh,"she said;"I will take this carriage—you must get another one."

For once, he accepted his dismissal with comparative meekness.

"When shall I come?"he asked.

"She smiled a little, in spite of herself.

"You may come for me at six o'clock,"she replied.

"Six o'clock!"he exclaimed; but accepted with resignation and closed the carriage door. Enigmatical sex!

Enigmatical sex indeed! Honora spent a feverish afternoon, rest and reflection being things she feared. an Afternoon in familiar places; and (strangest of all facts to be recorded!) memories and regrets troubled her not at all. Her old dressmakers, her old milliners, welcomed her as one risen, radiant, from the grave; risen, in their estimation, to a higher life. Honora knew this, and was indifferent to the wealth of meaning that lay behind their discretion. Milliners and dressmakers read the newspapers and periodicals—certain periodicals. We ll they knew that the lady they flattered was the future Mrs. Hugh Chiltern.

Nothing whatever of an indelicate nature happened. The re was no mention of where to send the bill, or of whom to send it to. Such things as she bought on the spot were placed in her carriage. And happiest of all omissions, she met no one she knew. The praise that Madame Barriere lavished on Honora's figure was not flattery, because the Paris models fitted her to perfection. A little after five she returned to her hotel, to a Mathilde in a high state of suppressed excitement. And at six, the appointed fateful hour, arrayed in a new street gown of dark green cloth, she stood awaiting him.

He was no laggard. The bell on the church near by was still singing from the last stroke when he knocked, flung open the door, and stood for a moment staring at her. Not that she had been shabby when he had wished to marry her at noon: no self-respecting woman is ever shabby; not that her present costume had any of the elements of overdress; far from it. Being a woman, she had her thrill of triumph at his exclamation. Diana had no need, perhaps, of a French dressmaker, but it is an open question whether she would have scorned them. Honora stood motionless, but her smile for him was like the first quivering shaft of day. He opened a box, and with a strange mixture of impetuosity and reverence came forward. And she saw that he held in his hand a string of great, glistening pearls.

"They were my mother's,"he said."I have had them restrung—for you."

"Oh, Hugh!"she cried. She could find no words to express the tremor within. And she stood passively, her eyes half closed, while he clasped the string around the lace collar that pressed the slender column of her neck and kissed her.